


girls in love are not the end of the world

by acupoftea



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: @myself wyd, Choices, Episode 5: Polarized, F/F, Fix-It, but yeah, except nothing's really accomplished, it's introspective..................again, kind of? almost a refusal ending, not entirely happy w my characterisation of max either its not ooc but i was just lazy, well...you'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:13:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9642125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acupoftea/pseuds/acupoftea
Summary: Her own words float back to her: “We were meant to be together at this exact moment in history.”Because now she knows. Now Max knows that this was never her choice, not really.If every choice was Chloe, then every choice would always lead here. There is no other outcome, because there is no Max without Chloe.(kind of a fix-it, kind of refusal, kind of something i haven't proof-read)





	

**Author's Note:**

> finished this game the other day with my gf, wrote this almost immediately & then forgot about it.
> 
> but really out of everyone, max deserves to be happy, and i was real sad abt both the choices she was offered (not that i didn't like them but give her a break, pls).

All Max can think is that she wants to kiss the girl standing in front of her, with a desperation that has recently become so familiar.

 

It’s crazy really, and inappropriate considering where they’ve found themselves. A skyline that’s sprawled in front of them, and a horizon that Max can’t see for all the wind and rain that looks like it could destroy the entire world, that’s getting closer every minute, every second.

 

And Max is looking out at it, at the hurricane storming just off the shore, and at Chloe, and it seems almost unfair that this is what they were always hurtling towards. A lighthouse with no light, a choice that is no choice at all.

 

And a butterfly is flapping its wings.

 

Max had used to be unable to think of one without the other, the bright blue of Chloe’s hair and the fluttering of the butterfly’s wings, and the way they both seemed to follow Max everywhere no matter what.

 

She had always thought it was Chloe and the butterfly, but now she realises she was all wrong, that the butterfly had been this, had been her, had always been a part of Max, had maybe even been the first part since Max first stepped in the town, and even before that as well.

 

Seeing Chloe silhouetted against Arcadia Bay now, she realises they have nothing to do with each other at all.

 

And Max doesn’t believe in fate, and she knows Chloe doesn’t either, but standing here, with the girl she’s saved, has saved, will save ( _always_ ), after everything they’ve been through, she can’t shake the feeling that tells her ‘home’ and ‘future’ and ‘here.’

 

That makes her want to lean over and press her lips against Chloe’s, but only if it meant _stay_ instead of _goodbye._

 

Max thinks about everything that led her to this moment, that led her to Chloe and she can feel it (unnameable, recognisable) coming for her, and it’s right there in Chloe’s outstretched hand.

 

Because every path Max has ever taken has always led her to Chloe.

 

She wonders if Chloe ever noticed the butterfly at all, if it’s blue for a reason, and she thinks maybe it’s also been guiding her the whole time to here. To this.

 

Except that doesn’t feel quite right.

 

Because in her mind, Max can see Warren, bruised smile, black eye, bleeding heart. And there’s Nathan, forceful, angry and tired all at once, dragged out to sea before he ever learnt to swim. Kate, who understood all this before all of them, before it had ever really started, who on another day in another storm, never even made it this far.

 

There’s every lifeline and every choice and Max thinks she might be starting to understand. Dust in her lungs, a sky turned grey, and she’s so close to this final, violent realisation.

 

Because before Chloe, before time travel and butterflies and a life put on countdown, the only thing Max ever felt she could be was smoke. She had been slow suffocation, a winding choking thing that smothers, she had been nothing, the thing people always forget, run from, a person who on some days couldn’t shake the feeling that _this was it_. High school walls and disappearing into the background.

 

And maybe some part of her knew that wasn’t true, but it was such a forgivable, easy decision, and like most things, up until recently she hadn’t realised it had been one at all.

 

A worn down acceptance for things as they were, space that just grew, empty and numb that Max had slipped into.   

 

Because it had been the movie nights with Warren, the corridor glances between her and Kate, phone calls from parents that made her acutely aware of all the miles that stretched between them. Photos and more photos, a history Max could barely claim to live through, lense on top of lense and the distance that never seemed to stop growing.

 

Until Chloe. The constant, the lighthouse, the sunrise. Unpredictable, reliable Chloe. Who came back.

 

Around Chloe, Max felt more like herself, like a someone, or anyone, like this was her here and forever: saving chloe and keeping herself. When she looked at Chloe, she could feel everything she could be, in a way she'd never considered before. 

 

Chloe, who was, who _is_ a car crash, an emergency put on hold. Who takes and gives and fights and bites back, who is part girl part _something_ Max is too scared to name. Chloe, chloe, chloe, the firecracker that never stops burning, that never ever goes out. Who kissed and kisses Max hard that first time and every time after like she’ll never stop, like she never wants to. Who took Max’s hand and never let go, not once, even here and now, looking at Max like she holds the entire world in her nail-bitten fingers, like she _is_ the world.

 

And wasn’t this what is was all about? Every choice was no choice and that was the hardest thing of all. It was just Chloe and everything that came after, wreckage and all.

 

Max sees the hurricane and she sees Chloe and it is startling. 

 

Every timeline. Every action. All of this, for a hurricane of a girl.

 

Max remembers the blue butterfly, swears she can feel it fluttering on the back of her neck.

 

And then Max shifts again. And this time it sticks.

 

And she finally, _finally,_ gets it. She wasn’t meant to understand until this moment. She knows this now. This was it, this was always it, and this beginning feels too much like an ending.

 

Her own words float back to her: _“We were meant to be together at this exact moment in history.”_

 

Because now she knows. Now Max knows that this was never her choice, not really.

 

If every choice was Chloe, then every choice would always lead here. There is no other outcome, because there is no Max without Chloe.

 

And Max still wants to kiss her. She wants to kiss Chloe like it’s not a goodbye, like whatever happens this sacrifice that Max has given her name to is a promise, not a memory or a keepsake.

 

Chloe, honest and sharp and wild, has been the only true thing Max has ever known, that _something_ , that feels so much like the horizon of Arcadia Bay she’s spent so many afternoons gazing out at.

  

For all the choices she never had, Chloe was one she thought she’d always get to keep.

 

Sacrifice is only sacrifice if you mean it, and Max is not ready to give anyone up for the sake of herself.  A choice that is not a choice, just a reciprocation of everything that was, that might’ve been.

 

And that dust in her lungs.

 

Because Chloe is a fire Max would never try to put out, and once, in a separate timeline or life or maybe just on another day altogether, she might’ve believed that the world was deserving of this. That it was just a catalyst for her, for them, for the ‘us’ they were always meant to be. She might’ve said ‘fuck it’ and given up this final thing, the world and everything in it, just for Chloe.

 

But what Max understands, right now, is that there are two lifeline’s stretching out before her, that there are two decisions and there are none, that both are equally impossible and unbearable.

 

What Max understands is that she can time travel, and she had no choice in that either, but what she also suspects is that if that were really true then things might have turned out very differently.

 

Most of all, what she is finally understanding is things as they are. That some things can never be hurricanes. It was never easy, it never could be. What would it have been worth if it was (and something deep down in Max says ‘fuck that, my life is not a lesson’).

 

A hurricane then, and what Max knows, which is this; that Rachel Amber was always dead. Which is that deer’s are not ghosts, that Chloe’s hair is blue, that girls in love are not the end of the world.

 

 And what Max knows is that she didn’t bring herself here, but she knows she brought Chloe, that it’s been years of giving up pieces of herself, of finding every way to lose herself over for the chance at choosing, at love, at everything that she never thought she’d find.

 

That all she is, is this. Max Caulfield. The butterfly that is and is not her, that it is blue, that maybe it’s time she lets it go.

 

What Max knows is that none of them deserve this, that life is a bitch, that Chloe is a fire but the only thing she ever burnt is herself, and Max could very well be the spark that lit her in the first place.

 

That she wants to kiss Chloe every day for the rest of her life, that Arcadia Bay is a place and not the world but it is hers and she wants to stay.

 

That it is raining and there is a butterfly flapping its wings, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, that there is a choice to be made.

 

That maybe, if Max can save anyone at all, it’s because she believes she can.

 

That there is a girl who loves her and a town she might finally be calling home, that this hurricane is what she makes it.

 

That if she has to choose anything it’s choosing to try, to believe that she can. That if she has to choose anything, it’s choosing to believe she has a choice, that this is what matters and nothing else.

 

What Max knows is for the first time she is choosing herself. She is choosing to believe that she deserves this.

 

Chloe, and Arcadia Bay.

 

Chloe, and the world.


End file.
